


Through the spaces of the dark

by tartanfics



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, POV John Watson, Plants, Sherlock's mental health, flowers don't fix anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 16:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tartanfics/pseuds/tartanfics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's been on the couch for three days. Maybe John thought a nice bright flower would cheer him up. Hell, he doesn't know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the spaces of the dark

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted a prompt to write a short fic, so I opened a book of TS Eliot. “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”:
> 
> _Twelve o’clock._  
>  _Along the reaches of the street_  
>  _Held in a lunar synthesis,_  
>  _Whispering lunar incantations_  
>  _Dissolve the floors of memory_  
>  _And all its clear relations,_  
>  _Its divisions and precisions,_  
>  _Every street lamp that I pass_  
>  _Beats like a fatalistic drum,_  
>  _And through the spaces of the dark_  
>  _Midnight shakes the memory_  
>  _As a madman shakes a dead geranium._
> 
> Thanks to [Provocatrixxx](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Provocatrixxx/pseuds/Provocatrixxx) for the beta. :)

John sets the flower pot down on the table, in the middle where it will get enough light from the windows and mark the dividing line between his side and Sherlock's. It's a pretty blurry line. John's never sure whether it's the roommates-putting-a-sheet-up type of dividing line or the kind of line that runs down the middle of their bed. In any case, now it has a geranium on it. 

He can't explain the moment of decision in which he bought the flower. He's never had a green thumb, never lived anywhere with a real garden or even a window box. It was just bright, orange-red in its blooming, and their flat is such a swamp of grey and brown and green. It's a bit like impulsively buying fig jam instead of strawberry. He just did it.

Sherlock rolls over on the couch, flopping like an unhealthily thin beached seal. He lifts his head up sideways and looks at the geranium. John brushes his hands off over the flower pot and tries not to make the sheepish face he knows he's already making.

"New hobby?" Sherlock asks, with an incredibly round posh O in "hobby."

John looks at the flower. He sticks his fingers in the dirt to check it's damp, and then has to wipe them off all over again. "Sorry, can't explain it. I wanted a flower."

Sherlock huffs out one of those loud breaths that means ‘you are strange but not interesting enough to question.’ He puts his head back down, tucking his arm underneath it for a pillow and peering vaguely into the room. He's been on the couch for three days. Maybe John thought a nice bright flower would cheer him up. Hell, he doesn't know. 

John consigns the geranium to being familiar Baker Street landscape and sits down in his chair. "Anything good on telly?" he asks Sherlock.

"Don't be stupid," Sherlock says, which means Sherlock knows exactly what’s on at this hour and has already watched everything or declared it boring. 

So John doesn't turn the telly on. He clasps his hands over his stomach and stares at the flower, and wonders what to do with the rest of his day.

-

John's so tired the street lamps look like they're pulsing. He has no idea where they are--it's the middle of the night and he's following Sherlock home. Sherlock has let three cabs pass and is walking slowly. He's practically strolling. John is too tired to try and speed him up, and too hazy to question Sherlock's meandering path home from the crime scene.

He solved it, but solving it didn't do anything for the mood he's been in the past week. He's still making that face he makes when he's lying on the couch. And now he's walking very slowly down a 2 a.m. street with his hands in his pockets. 

John opens his mouth to say something, and then changes his mind and nudges Sherlock's arm with his instead. "Hey."

"Mm?"

"We going home? You know, before morning?"

"Obviously," Sherlock says, jerking his chin at the next street crossing the one they're on. It's not Baker Street, but now John's looking it does look familiar. 

"Okay. You all right?"

Sherlock comes to a slow stop and turns to John. John keeps walking long enough that when he stops and turns they're both standing perpendicular to the street. "Fine," Sherlock mutters before he looms in and bends down to kiss John's mouth. 

John kisses back, mostly due to inertia. After a minute he pulls back and attempts eye contact. "What are you doing?"

Sherlock's huff of breath hits him full in the face, hot and damp. "No, I mean," John says, attempting to backtrack. "You just don't, usually. Out of the flat."

"I'm usually busy when I'm out of the flat." Sherlock plants one hand on the back of John's neck and looks down at him rather dubiously.

"True, I s'pose." John leans back in and gets another kiss of hot breath and cold night air. It's refreshing. Not enough to really wake him up, but enough to clear some of the sleepy haze. He tucks his hands inside Sherlock's coat and rubs his fingers against the edges of Sherlock's back. 

Maybe tomorrow there'll be a proper case.

-

On Sunday John finds Sherlock watering his geranium. He has a mug full of water--John's coffee mug, at that--which he is tipping over the flower. John comes in with a plate of eggs and toast to eat at the table, but he stops when he sees what Sherlock's doing and stands there with his plate resting on the back of his armchair. 

"You forgot about it," Sherlock says. Of course he knows John's standing there watching.

"I did a bit." He watered it the first few days, but he's always been bad at doing things that aren't rigidly habitual and their schedule is too random to develop habits like watering the flowers. He takes his plate around to his side of the table and sits. Sherlock sets the emptied mug down on the table next to the plant, but he doesn't look away from the geranium. "You could make an experiment out of it, if you want to," John offers.

"Why would I want to do that?" Sherlock asks in a monotone. 

-

John imagines the geranium dying. It's what he expects, of course. He imagines it dying, and Sherlock uprooting it to experiment on. He imagines Sherlock, in a moment of--of _Sherlock_ , madness, frustration--shaking the dead flower over the table, its roots shedding dirt all over the newspapers, John's laptop, the case files stolen from the Yard.

He lies in Sherlock's bed and imagines this, as Sherlock lies next to him, flat on his back with his hands clasped over his stomach. Sherlock's not sleeping, and they haven't had sex in, oh God, _weeks_. He's just there. And he probably knows that John isn't asleep either. They still haven't had a proper case.

John bites the bullet and turns his head out of the pillow, towards Sherlock. He wriggles over across the empty space of bed--across the line--and rests his forehead against Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock's in his pyjamas, at least.

"Sherlock."

No answer. No movement at all. "Hey, get under the covers," John says, in the kind of hushed voice that fails to be a whisper.

Sherlock complies, lifting himself up on heels and shoulders to pull the duvet out from underneath. He even turns towards John and lets John tuck one hand into his chest, which is solid and warm. John knows Sherlock sometimes feels as if he isn't really there, isn't solid, and sometimes _wants_ to feel that way. But it isn't true.

-

Sherlock keeps watering the geranium. It doesn't die.


End file.
